Dexys Soar on Album Comeback After 27 Years: Mark Beech

The cover of "One Day I'm Going to Soar," a studio album by U.K. band Dexys, its first in 27 years. The group has shortened its name from the original Dexys Midnight Runners. Source: BMG via Bloomberg

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- In a year of rock comebacks -- the
Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Stone Roses, Blur -- none are as
dramatic as Dexys.

The U.K. band, best known for its 1982 transatlantic chart-topping hit “Come on Eileen,” has reformed after 27 years with
the best album of its career, “One Day I’m Going to Soar.”

“I’d had a particularly difficult day,” singer Kevin
Rowland explains the title in a video interview. “I woke up in
the middle of the night and I literally thought, ‘one day I am
really going to soar.’ Metaphorically speaking -- to do great
things, create what I know to be art, that’s what I always
wanted to do. I wasn’t always able to do that, but doing that
again now is great.”

The record lives up to its name and will end up on a lot of
critics’ “Best of 2012” lists, including mine. Dexys are on tour
to promote it, with Australian dates following the U.K.

Back in the 1970s, Rowland was a petty criminal advertising
for musicians for his “new wave soul” act. One reply was from a
trombone player working in a porridge oats factory in Scotland.
That was ‘Big’ Jim Paterson, who was blown away by the sound of
songs like “Geno,” which shot to No. 1 in 1980.

“The only ambition I had musically was to be on ‘Top of
the Pops,’” Paterson says. “Hey presto, there I was.” Rowland
nods. “Seems like it was someone else, it was so long ago.”

The band’s poppy album “Too-Rye-Ay” in 1982 was followed by
“Don’t Stand Me Down,” which I gave a glowing review to in the
long-defunct magazine Soundcheck in 1985. I was disappointed to
see the LP bomb. It’s still wonderfully downbeat.

Cocaine Squatter

Rowland, then 32, sank into depression, drink, cocaine and
money problems. He was squatting and tried a couple of solo
albums, including the much-maligned “My Beauty,” with its cross-dressing cover. He was bottled off the stage in 1999 and fared
little better with abortive attempts to reform Dexys. While he
had the songs, nobody seemed interested.

“We demoed them and I expected people to say, ‘these are
amazing,’ because they did sound great to me,” says Rowland, now
59. “It was only when we started doing them with musicians, and
we thought ‘Blimey, this is really good.’”

Paterson, who hadn’t played for 16 years, was surprised to
hear of the comeback. His trombone was in the attic of his house
where a family of pigeons had moved in.

“It was a shame to disturb them,” he says. “I almost broke
my neck taking it out of the loft! It was worth the effort.”

Stars Aligned

Both Paterson and Rowland say “the stars were aligned” as
they came to record.

Rowland realized that the songs worked well assembled into
a sequence of wanting (“She’s Got a Wiggle,”) wooing (“I’m
Thinking of You”), winning (“I’m Always Going to Love You”)
walking away (“Incapable of Love”) and enjoying no commitments
(“Free”). It sounds autobiographical, but he won’t say more.

Madeleine Hyland’s duets are highlights. It took more than
five years to find her, Rowland says. “It started to feel a bit
like the search for Scarlett O’Hara in ‘Gone With the Wind.’”
They met only six weeks before the album was recorded as Mick
Talbot helped polish the music.

“I couldn’t do it on my own,” says Rowland, stressing the
help from his friends. “If I did it wouldn’t be anything like as
good as this. It’s my vision and everybody works toward that.”

“We are just doing our own thing,” he says. Don’t follow
anyone, be your own movement. “Once you label something, you
kill it. If you put it in a box, it’s hard to get out of it.”

Navvies, Yuppies

The band has adopted a different “look” for each record,
sometimes described as navvies/ dockers, gypsy farmhands and
preppy yuppies. What about this time?

“People say our clothes are 1930s, 1940s or Italian
gangster,” Rowland says. “They are retro inspired, rather than
retro. We’re just taking from anywhere, some contemporary. We
just mix it all up.”

Paterson says, “To me Kevin is the boss, but he doesn’t see
it that way. We have a special bond I suppose, the Celtic Soul
Brothers.” The big Scot is sure he’d prefer a few great CDs to
many mediocre albums. “Four great ones, that’s quite a lot.”

Rowland agrees. “I am glad now that there was this long
gap, because there’s no way we would have made an album like
this if we’d have been knocking them out. It’s almost like the
payoff for all those years.”

“One Day I’m Going to Soar” is on BMG Records priced $14.
Download fees vary across services. For a review of the album,
click here. For more information: http://dexys.info.